Three Lives
by Starkreactor
Summary: Spoilers for Quiet Minds. Magic always comes with a price, and the price of resurrection is simply too high. One shot.


"Rumple?" Belle's voice was soft, her frame wrapped in a shawl to fend of the night's chill. It wasn't even that cold, but since Neal's funeral she, and the entire town, had been cold.

Rumplestiltskin turned his head slowly to glance at her, but his eyes were unseeing. He was sitting, still in his black dress pants and shirt from the funeral, his cane leaning against the kitchen table, his hands loosely clasped as he hunched over them, as though the will to hold himself erect had gone. "Go back to bed, Belle." he said quietly, staring back out the window across from the small, round table. The lights were off, and the only illumination came from three candles and what sparse moonlight made it through the curtains.

Belle adjusted her shawl and went forward despite his suggestion, sitting down at the table next to him. She didn't say anything, but she reached out and took one of his hands. It was cold, just like everything else, and she held it between both of hers in an effort to warm him up. She watched him watch the dark, the thin flames from the candles huddled in a silent half-circle wake around him doing little to push away the darkness she could see clouding his eyes and heart. "Oh Rumple." she sighed, tears brimming on her long lashes. She reached out a hand and brushed the hair away from his face, and he did not react to her touch. She cupped his cheek, and he blinked wearily, leaning minutely into her touch. Her heart broke when she felt him tremble.

"Three lives, Belle. It's too many." his voice was as quiet as he was broken, and her hand slipped from his cheek to rest on his fingers, squeezing them reassuringly.

"Three lives?" she asked, blinking back tears. "What do you mean?"

"Three lives have sustained this one body." he said, staring into the middle candle's flame. "My own, which died a long time ago." He raised his fingers and passed his hand over the first candle, smoke curling up the only evidence of the extinguished flame. "I died the moment that dagger plunged into the dark one's heart the first time." His lips curled a little as he spoke, his words a little stronger. He turned his eyes on the candle to his right. "Cora's life, after that miserable pirate poisoned me." He snapped his fingers over the candle and it was snuffed out with a violent finality. "No great loss there, I suppose."

His voice was flippant, but Belle could see the tiny spark of regret in his eyes and she rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb. She looked into the final flame, a solitary brilliance directly in front of them both.

"And Bae." he managed, reaching out to caress the flame with a cupped hand, visibly wanting to touch it, but daring not to. "Bae's life fueling this black heart." Rumplestiltskin's eyes were on the candle, but Belle's were on him.

"He was glad to give it." Belle said. "He had family to protect too, your family, and he entrusted that to you. He believed you have more than the darkness, and it was that part of you he dedicated his life to."

"No." he shook his head, drawing his hand away from the flame and sitting back in his chair, tear-tracks showing in the firelight. "Bae gave himself to bring back the dark one. Nothing good has ever come out of that kind of magic, and nothing ever will. When a life has ended, it should remain that way."

"Dark magic was only the agent that restored you." Belle said, cupping his cheek and turning his head so that he was looking at her. "It was love, for you, for his—our family that he traded for. Not for the dark one. Not for vengeance. It was love, Rumple, and only good can come out of that." She placed a hand against his breast, and he glanced down at it, questioning when he looked back up at her. "Your heart isn't half so dark as you think it is. Not after what you did for Baelfire, for me, for Henry."

"It didn't work!" he exclaimed, sitting up against her hand, taking it away from his heart and clasping it desperately in his own. "That was to be my redemption, to be the end of the darkness, and it didn't work. Instead of the darkness dying, it's won again, and Bae is dead!"

The tears struck angrily down his cheeks, and though he was holding her hands tightly, she noted he was careful not to hurt her in his anger. "I know." she said, tears of her own breaking as she reached with her free hand to stroke back his hair. She leaned in and kissed him, murmuring against his resisting lips. "I know." She pulled away and cupped his face in both her hands. "But this is a different kind of redemption. Love is light. Baelfire was light. He's giving you a chance to be more than the dark one. Don't waste it."

He sought her face miserably for several long moments, his eyes crinkled with pain, with weariness. She slid her hands down his neck to rest on his shoulders. Slowly, he leaned forward to rest his head against her neck, and she stroked his hair and down his burdened back, smoothing the tense muscles into an exhausted relaxation. Together, they watched the solitary flame, the golden light infusing color into skin paled by grief. Slowly, his arms encircled her waist and he buried his face in her shoulder, and he wept.


End file.
